“What, then,” he coolly replied, with a sharp grin that reeked of self-confidence, “Would you call all the messes of make-up and perfume and other such things which they were virtually forced to wear? I see nothing different between wearing face coverings and transplanting an entirely new face, hair, and body on oneself everyday. In fact, our women got together and decided voluntarily to do so, for the very reason that if an artificial covering must be put on, it might as well be one that is easy, for why spend an hour or more a day to change one’s appearance, when it can be done in moments with a head covering? That is a great time saver for us. And why spend the resources to research, produce, and market massive amounts of facial paint to cover up the face when it is possible to put a covering on and get the same effect much, much easier? It is only logical.
“And in general, Jehu,” he pursued, warming to the subject matter, “I find the oppression of women in your time to be quite appalling. You seemed to think that the liberation of women consisted in transforming them into loveless, materialistic thugs, into workaholics whose only desire is wealth, into aggression driven beings that possessed little shred of real humanity, into, in a word, men. I think it would have been a much better endeavor to have attempted to change men into women.”
I was taken aback by his eloquent defense of the treatment of women in his society, and felt, I must admit, a little impressed by his arguments, seeing as how it did make more sense to wear a head covering than to paint on a face every morning. Still, I desired to let him see that traditions aren’t all that bad, just as they aren’t all that good, and, as I had still won one point out of two so far, I felt it safe to move on to my main argument against his humanistic preponderance.
“You are right there, I admit, but tell me, your majesty,” I said with a slow, scoffing voice, meant to show that I had a powerful point to make, and as if I had to go slow enough for him to comprehend the eloquence of my speech, “Why, if you are so enlightened and progressive, so humanitarian and merciful, why do you keep a whole race of people, of human beings, stranded on the far shore, able to see the goodness of Daem’s plush lands, but unable to visit them? How can you justify the keeping of people in such conditions when it is in your power to relieve them?”
He sobered up more than he already was and answered in his most dignified voice, one calculated to stop opposition by its very graces, “Their plight is unfortunate, but as they are not my subjects, it is none of my concern.”
“So you knew of them, but did not care. How typical of powerful men. What are they called?”
“Munams,” he answered, “Is what we call them, though people of your time had a different name for them, Neanderthal, if I am correct.”
My intrigue superseded my conviction and I asked interestedly, “But, how is that possible? The Neanderthals were the ancestors of men in my time, and the men of my time were the ancestors of the men of this time, how could they be living now?”
“Very simply, for your scientists and philosophers did not understand the revolution of time, and what they thought was evolution was in fact devolution. You see, when they found all the fossils and other such evidence for evolution, they interpreted it to mean that they had evolved from lesser organisms. Since they didn’t know that time repeats itself over and over again, ages of time being like the years of the earth, it was actually the remains of the age before them that they thought were the remains of their ancestors. In truth, instead of a great comet hitting the earth and destroying the dinosaurs and many other living beings, it was the Great Wars, the nuclear wars, that caused all the damage. And since their perception of the events was backward, instead of the blasts destroying the dinosaurs and the wholly mammoths, it was what actually created them, for, you see, after the nuclear weapons had all been used, everything in the world died, or came very close to it, all that is, except Daem, which thrived, because of the delcator beetles.
“There were no ‘dinosaurs’, only Zards, for when the radiation levels were still high and unstable, we grew to enormous sizes, and likewise there were no wholly mammoths, but Canitaurs. And the Neanderthals that appeared shortly after were not the precursors to humans at all, but the Munams, who survived on the mainland near Daem because of the corrected atmosphere, but who were mutilated more than we by the increased corruption across the sea. The Ice Ages, also, were not as you thought, but instead mark the position in the last age after the doom of humanity was played out and everything destroyed. The Big Bang, also, was not at the beginning, but at the very end, being somehow related to the onset of the Ice Ages. Your evolutionary theories were close, but the time tables were rearranged to fit the facts, since time was thought to be linear.